Theda Bara

 Theda Bara, born Theodosia Burr Goodman (July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955)

She was a silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the most popular actresses of the silent era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname The Vamp (short for vampire), later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles that encapsulated exoticism and sexual domination. Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but most were lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire. After her marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made two more feature films and then retired from acting in 1926, having never appeared in a sound film. Her career suffered without Fox studio's support, and she did not make another film until The Unchastened Woman (1925) for Chadwick Pictures Corporation. Bara retired after making only one more film, the short comedy Madame Mystery (1926), made for Hal Roach and directed by Stan Laurel, in which she parodied her vamp image. Bara was known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films. Such outfits were banned from Hollywood films after the Production Code (aka the Hays Code) started in 1930, and then was more strongly enforced in 1934. It was popular at that time to promote an actress as mysterious, with an exotic background. For her contributions to the film industry, Bara received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Her star is located at 6307 Hollywood Boulevard. She died of stomach cancer on April 7, 1955 at age 69. Bara is interred at Forest Lawn-Glendale.